By Bruce A. Smith

I was a camper at Philmont Scout Ranch when I was sixteen-years old, and it was one of the most meaningful experiences of my youth. As a kid growing up in suburban New York, I had never traveled to the western United States, and my month-long expedition with a bus-load of scouts from Long Island was profound – I saw big mountains for the first time and prong-horned sheep scampering on the prairies of Wyoming, and met scouts from Los Angeles, a place so exotic in my mind that it seemed like I was meeting guys from Mars.

We spent ten days hiking in the mountains of Philmont, a sprawling wilderness of over 100,000 acres nestled on the eastern slopes of the Sangre De Cristo Mountains of New Mexico. I climbed Mount Baldy – at 14,000 feet the highest I had ever been in life, and got lost on the way down when we left the treeless tundra of the summit and couldn’t find where the trail re-entered the forest. Fortunately, my cohorts and I fanned out and searched the woods as the sun fell beneath the western horizon. Within a few moments, our crew leader, Jimmy – a savvy 17-year old – found the trailhead and we scrambled along the path to our campsite at 10,000 feet.

Now, the BSA is in trouble. The Scouts are grappling with how to compensate all the young men who were sexually abused by predatory scoutmasters during its history. That’s decades of abuse, and thousands of affected kids. It’s a lot of money, but well worth it. I understand the BSA’s need to place Philmont as collateral to secure a $400 million compensation loan, but it hurts and scares me. I support the move – after all where else are the Scouts going to find any more money? Already they have scoured the wealthy – my beloved home camp of Wauwepex in Wading River, NY, has been renamed the Schiff Scout Reservation of Nassau County Council – and the BSA has been charging boys thirty bucks to join the Scouts when it was free back in my day. Plus, the BSA wants to raise that annual fee to $60.

My Gawd, what is happening to my Boy Scouts? Everything I’ve cherished all my life seems at risk. I hope we – and the BSA – find a way through all of this mess. If it hadn’t been for the Scouts, my teenage years would have been truly insufferable instead of barely tolerable. I had been blessed with the wise and caring leadership of many adult men, most notably my home troop leader of Mr. John Peters; my first boss, Johnnie Jones, who was the Ranger at Camp Wauwepex and was like a second father to me; and Mr. Robert Henderson, a former high school English teacher who led my Philmont group through rugged terrain and titanic teen clashes. Where would I be now if not for them?

I pray that Philmont and the BSA survive, and that all the boys who enter the Scouts will be safe – from each other, their leaders, and the wonderful challenges that Mother Nature will present as they explore the trails of life.

To read more of my experiences at Philmont, especially at the campsite known as Cimmaroncito, which was destroyed in the forest fire of a couple of years ago as described in the following article, click here:

Gottman and Beck Find a Bear in their Bed – from Campfire Tales: True Stories Not Everyone Believes

To read more of my times at Wauwepex, click here:

Wauwepex – a tale of a scout camp and a young man – from “Stories from the Journey”